glucose concentration, pyruvate and phenol red in DMEM

Dear All
I would like to know what is the appropriate concentration of Glucose in DMEM medium for ordinary maintenance of human cancer cell lines, is it 1 g/L(5.5mM) or 4.5 g/L (25mM). Also should it contain pyruvate or not? should it contain phenol red or not?
thanks

in my previous lab we all were culturing human cancer cell lines of different origin (>20 cell lines) in DMEM with low glucose (1g/L). Now when I moved to a new lab, I found that they are using DMEM/high glucose (4.5g/L, 25mM) for culturing the same cell lines. The point is that, 4.5g/L glucose mimics hyperglycemic conditions in vivo, but the low glucose (1g/L, 5.5mM) mimics the normal glucose level in vivo. So my question remains unanswered, does anyone know the rational for maintaining the cell lines in a condition that mimics hyperglycemic conditions? unfortunately people here do not the reason, and in some high impact factor journals they use high glucose (http://cancerres.aac...9677.full#sec-2)comments are appreciatedthanks

There is no rationale for maintaning cells in high glucose, unless that is what the cells were originally cultured in; in which case, culturing them in low glucose would potentially cause a genetic drift sort of effect as the cells become adjusted to the low glucose. I think you will find that people typically culture their cells in whatever medium they are used to, without thinking about it too much.

Regards phenol red: Some cell lines express oestrogen receptors, which as phenol red is an oestrogen analogue (albeit weak), causes internalization of the receptor and a corresponding decrease in the growth rate of the cells, in theory at least.

That's a good question. I don't have the answer but I found this info from Sigma, which may be helpful for you to understand the function of glucose and pyruvate in culture medium. It's basic biochemistry.